The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth, by Malcolm Pryce (Bloomsbury, £9.99)

The fascinating travails of Louie Knight, the lone private eye in Aberystwyth, reach their third instalment, and the tone, which began as a Monty Python meets Raymond Chandler meets The Dam Busters Welsh romp, turns darker. Louie's latest case has a chilly and rather stark autumnal feel. Not only is the love of his life, Myfanwy Montez, in a semi-vegetative state; she has also been kidnapped as part of a devious case involving a barrel-organ man, his monkey, mad nuns, stray waifs and many of the unforgettable denizens of this parallel world, where Wales had a space programme and fought a war in Patagonia. A sad sense of the inevitability of bad things happening to good people pervades this always marvellously imaginative caper, and the humour is tinged with terrible irony as even the baddies reveal all-too-human frailties. You'll weep and laugh, on the same page. Wonderful.

The Black Angel, by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99)

After a detour into the realm of ghost stories with his collection Nocturnes, Irish writer John Connolly returns to the crime and mystery field, albeit with a gothic sense of menace that is closer to the fantastic than ever before. Seldom has a thriller writer been so adept at turning the screw yet further and evoking a sense of awful dread among his landscapes and tormented characters. Charlie Parker is reluctantly drawn away from uneasy domestic bliss to investigate the disappearance of a friend's cousin whose skull is soon found as part of a strange series of sculptures. Sinister legends speak of a "Black Angel" whose modus operandi is now clear to see, and Parker is soon knee-deep in a world of terror whose history goes back several centuries, and confronting his fate and the spectres of his past foes. Colourful but visceral grand guignol, and definitely not to be read at night.

Ash and Bone, by John Harvey (Heinemann, £12.99)

Retired DI Frank Elder occasionally works - when he can summon enough willpower - for the Murder Review Unit, which examines cold and difficult cases. An erstwhile colleague, with whom he had a short, unconsummated fling ages back, has been found raped and murdered, and there appears to be a connection to a botched police takedown in which she was involved. As he slowly begins piecing together the truth, Elder is also forced to confront his problem-laden daughter and ex-wife and the tons of guilt he has been carrying on his shoulders since the break-up. A large gallery of credible characters with familiar hangups and minor joys populate the novel and supply it with the invigorating breath of life in Britain as we know it today; even Harvey's old series character Charlie Resnick makes a brief appearance. Harvey makes it all look effortless, but this is first-class craftsmanship.

The Welfare of the Dead, by Lee Jackson (Heinemann, £12.99)

Victorian London can be such an evocative place, having captured the imaginations of countless crime writers in a whirlpool of intrigue and social upheaval. To Conan Doyle, Anne Perry, Andrew Martin and many others past and present we must now add Lee Jackson who, with this third novel (and the second to feature Inspector Decimus Webb, newly promoted to Scotland Yard), makes this historical patch his very own. A killer is at large, choosing his victims among disreputable dance halls and houses of ill-repute, but assorted clues point to him coming from a more rarefied stratum of society, and Webb must find hard evidence for his connection before the assassin kills again. Moving from dark alleys and gaslit streets through a city in flux, the doughty cop proves a resourceful and well-delineated character. Simple entertainment done to a tee.

· Maxim Jakubowski's latest book is Best British Mysteries 2005 (Allison & Busby).